Ever since Super Bowl viewers got a split-second glance at Janet Jackson’s breast three years ago, Washington’s Republican power brokers — aided and abetted by a disturbing number of Democrats — have tightened up broadcast standards in a truly bizarre way.

Cultural dreck and lowest-common-denominator fare on commercial networks has been largely unaffected, but high-brow, high-end programming at PBS has suffered. A tiny California public television station was fined after a single viewer complained about some “tough” language, which had been used in context, in a Martin Scorsese–produced documentary about the blues. The current-events show Frontline is on constant alert lest it incur the wrath of the federal broadcast police. And now filmmaker Ken Burns, who tackles apple-pie subjects with uncommon grit and intelligence, is caught up in a controversy about whether four words — two “fucks,” one “shit,” and an “asshole” — in his 14-hour documentary about World War II, The War, will land broadcasters who air his work in trouble. That trouble could cost stations up to $1.3 million in fines each time they broadcast an uncut and uncensored version of Burns’s work.

Not surprisingly, two versions of The War have been prepared, but many PBS outlets are still not sure which one they will air or when. The safest course would be to run The War with all the allegedly hot-button words only during the so-called safe haven between 10 pm and 6 am and to run the sanitized version the rest of the time. It is a decidedly depressing cultural moment when serious broadcast outlets have to weigh the possibility of penalties that could range from significant to huge to show the work of a serious filmmaker. And even if no fines result, the very process of defending oneself against such charges is costly, and thus intimidating in its own right.

Outrage aside, there is also a depressing dollop of irony in this particular incident. That soldiers and sailors use salty language is not exactly a revelation. But one of the unintentional linguistic byproducts of World War II was a vocabulary enriched with inspired displays of profanity that have an almost poetical rudeness. There is an example that some scholars of language cherish of an officer shortly after the D-Day landings asking a soldier why he wasn’t moving his Jeep from a blocked intersection, “The fucking fucker is fucked, sir,” the soldier explained.

There are the acronyms SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) and FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition or — more politely — Fouled Up Beyond All Repair) that are now commonplace. We — and our language — are richer for them.

The FCC’s role as the media’s linguistic watchdog is all the worse for its lack of definition and clarity. That uncertainty-breeding vagueness is more than just a part of the current administration’s general repressiveness. It is part of the Bush White House campaign to create, in Karl Rove’s words, its own reality. To create a world of fiction and illusion, you must first destroy the real world. And if you can’t destroy reality (which is, after all, a rather tall order for the insidious but incompetent Bush crowd), then you want to discourage people from coming to grips with it.

Bush’s FCC is first and foremost mired in the old-time religion of prudery. But don’t kid yourself. It is also animated by mind control. Colorful language from blues musicians and aging beatniks might offend Christian right wingers. But the honest profanity of World War II might remind a larger public — even if only subliminally — that the war our nation is fighting today in Iraq is a not a good thing.

The perversity of today’s FCC is that by being vague it can be more effectively chilling, censorious, and repressive.

Murdoch mishegoss Never mind that Rupert Murdoch is shelling out better than $2 billion to buy Metromedia’s seven TV stations. Never mind that he’s then turning around and reselling Boston’s WCVB-TV, Channel 5 to the Hearst Corporation for an astounding $450 million.

Film noir or red meat? On this, all agree: nobody in 1940s Hollywood consciously made “film noirs,” though that’s what we now call The Maltese Falcon , Double Indemnity , The Big Sleep , and other dark, cynical, crime melodramas.

Why ‘fairness’ fails Anyone who has ever sampled the auditory sewer that is right-wing talk radio can understand the impulse to reinstate the so-called “fairness doctrine.”

Speech therapy The Muzzle Awards have been chronicling the worst Free Speech violations for a decade. Here are some of the lowlights from the past 10 years.

Mind boggling The article “ Rethinking 9/11 ” offered some provocative, well-written food for thought. But what I ultimately found most “mind bending” was that you could run a piece like this without including the voice of a single Muslim or Arab.

MERCY AND SAL DIMASI | March 13, 2013 When it comes to showing a modicum of mercy to some of those convicted of federal crimes, Barack Obama is shaping up to have the worst track record of any president in recent memory.

NEXT, MARRIAGE EQUALITY | March 05, 2013 On March 27 and 28, the US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in two cases that could essentially put America on the road to full marriage equality.

THUS SPAKE MARKEY | February 26, 2013 Last week, Congressman Ed Markey inadvertently injected some daring political thinking and a touch of historical imagination into the race to fill the US Senate seat vacated by John Kerry's appointment as secretary of state.

DRONES: 10 THOUGHTS | February 20, 2013 Foreign drone attacks are almost (but not quite yet) as American as apple pie.